


Yawny at the Apocalypse

by tambrathegreat



Series: Michonne and Daryl Stories [4]
Category: The Walking Dead
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:29:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1946412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambrathegreat/pseuds/tambrathegreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michonne didn't want to care, but she did.</p><p>Last in the Daryl/Michonne series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yawny at the Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to The Lady Zombie for her alpha read and great suggestions for this little vignette. Jilliane red-moused this story, any mistakes remaining are my own.
> 
> Further appreciation goes to Andrew Bird for his song, "Yawny at the Apocalypse."

Michonne didn’t want to care. 

She didn’t want to care that Halloween night when she had pushed Dixon away. She didn’t want to care in the weeks following when he would be out for days scavenging, fighting, and burning. She didn’t want to look for him every morning at breakfast; she didn’t want to be nervous when he didn’t return before supper. She most certainly didn’t want that stab of disappointment when he did come back, exhausted, surly, secretive, and still obviously hurt in his surly, redneck way, by her rebuff of his advances. 

She thought she had burned emotion out of herself in the months she spent with her undead, modified boyfriend and the hapless victim he had made after he turned. When the time to kill Andrea had come, she hadn’t flinched, and she had been closer to Andrea than she had cared to admit.

And now Dixon had been gone for three days and two endless nights, while Michonne had lain awake in her cell, running through scenarios in which the redneck was alive, unhurt, and fucking off. She encouraged the anger that coursed through her as each indolent, shiftless, no-account cracker scene played out in her mind no matter how unlikely the imagined scenarios actually were. Anger was manageable, familiar, and useful. It got her through the day without showing the cracks in her façade, and it allowed her to keep the hope that she hadn’t lost yet another person to this plague. Tears were useless in this new world.

When she’d seen him come through the gates today, half-dragged by Glenn and Rick, she had made a mumbled excuse about using the bathroom, gave her load of laundry (her assigned chore for the half day) to one of the new women, and breathlessly made it inside, ignoring the pointed looks of the women and men who surrounded her. She hadn’t wanted to care about the possibility of him getting injured, or worse, bitten, but she did.

Now, she stood outside his cell, listening to the old vet, Herschel, attempting to work Dixon’s shoulder back into its socket, digging her fingers into her legs to keep from crying out every time the redneck _\-- Daryl—you can say it to yourself--_ let out a muffled scream. 

After a silent eternity, Herschel finally pulled back the blanket strung across the front of the space for privacy. Michonne had faded into the adjacent cell, not wanting to be seen. She didn’t need the pity that she knew would be in the vet’s gaze as he went on his way. That damned old man saw too much. 

Herschel passed the doorway, with his usual metallic clomp, stopped suddenly, and said, “I just gave him a sedative for the pain, but since he’s suffering from hypothermia, he’ll need watching while he sleeps. Can you do that for me?”

“Does he need more blankets, or anything?” Michonne slid forward into the hallway. Before she could stop herself, she blurted, “Maybe I should just climb into bed with him.”

“Shared body heat might work. Of course, you’d have to be careful of his shoulder. I didn’t put it in a sling since he’s in bed.” Herschel said with a wry, knowing twist of his lips under his shaggy beard. “Give it a try if you think he needs it.”

“Maybe if I thought he was worth it, I would.” She couldn’t control the hateful down turn of her own lips as she said the words.

Herschel gave a sharp bark of laughter and then continued on his way.

She entered the cell, a tentative hand on the curtain. If he was awake she would leave, if not she knew she would give into her traitorous urge to touch him, to make sure he was truly safe. 

He lay on the bed, a fagile peace settled on his face in the shadow cast by the half-light of the room. She’d never ventured past the curtain in her dealings with him. He always had the room closed off for maximum privacy, the same as she did with her own space. Now as she looked around, noting the small items he had brought back from the forest: pretty rocks, unusual pine cones, bits of bark, things a small boy might find interesting. Her dry snort of amusement echoed in the room, silent except for his breathing. 

She watched him for a moment from the foot of the bed before a shiver wracked his body. Surely it wouldn’t hurt for her to just lie down on top of the blanket. He obviously needed some warmth. Of course, if she got under the covers, her body would heat him faster and she would be able to leave before he woke.

She dithered for a while longer until he said in a husky voice, “Are you gonna follow doctor’s orders or are you just sight-seein’?” 

The rasp of the wool blanket being thrown off of him was loud in the relative silence of the room. Outside, probably in the field, one of Rick’s pigs squealed, and a child shrieked in mirth or pain. It was hard to tell by the sound of screams these days. Michonne shivered at the thought. “Come on, Sunshine, I’m freezin’ my balls off here.”

He patted the sheet, an Egyptian cotton with a high thread count. That little luxury had been the addition of one of the new residents. They had owned a small town department store that wasn’t too overrun for a trip for luxury items. Michonne took a step towards him, wanting to bolt, but compelled, nonetheless, to do as her body wanted. It had been a long time since... “What happened? Did you get cornered by walkers?”

She put one knee on the bed, steeling herself for contact with him when he said, “Take off your pants. They’re dirty.”

Her answer was a sidelong look towards him. He shook his head and was wracked by a chill. “I slept in enough dirt as a kid. Don’t wanna do it no more, not when I don’t have to.”

“Turn around then.” Michonne said as she fingered the button to her jeans. She remembered her own poor and hungry youth. Even if her childhood hadn’t been as hard as his, there had been plenty of dirt for her too, along with a special kind of violence reserved for little black girls who were just too smart for their own good. She undid several buttons on her jeans. The cold December air, not mitigated by the generator they had running the heat, hit her skin as the fly gaped, causing her flesh to break out in goose bumps. Michonne paused, catching Dixon’s unreadable gaze before she twirled her finger. Doing her best imitation of her mother, she said, “You heard what I said, boy.”

Dixon snorted, and with an exasperated sigh, flounced over on his good arm as theatrically as he was able. There was just enough light in the gloom for her to see that he wore boxers not briefs. Michonne finished removing her trousers and slid into position behind him. It felt odd to be in bed, half-dressed with another human being who was also mostly undressed. Even when she was travelling with Andrea they had both always worn clothes. It was easier to get up and run with them on. The last man she’d been even partially naked with had been her dearly departed boyfriend. It seemed like eons since then.  
“You never answered my question.”

“You ain’t keepin’ me warm,” Dixon said. “Move closer and I’ll tell you.”

She slid next to him, a pulsing awareness writhing in her gut as his still cool skin contacted hers. The sparse hairs on the backs of his legs prickled and made her itch until she drew her own thighs closer to his. She settled one arm over his midsection and was surprised to feel his hand on hers, as his breathing slipped into an even, shallow pattern. Michonne’s eyes drooped shut as the tension that settled over her when he was lost, eased with each breath he took. 

“It wasn’t walkers.” He said, though his speech was more than a little slurred. “I got treed by a bear, a big brown bastard. I think it was a grizzly.”

A huff of laughter escaped her. “We don’t have grizzly bears in this part of the country.”

Silence fell and languor overtook her again and she slipped down the path to sleep. As if from a great distance she heard him say, “Things change all the time, especially now.”

She dreamed of her boyfriend. He wasn’t the horror that he had been in her dream, he was like he used to be, with his quick smile, and eyes tilted up at the corner from mirth. It was obvious that he had just come in from a pick-up game. He had a thick, white towel around his neck and sweat trickled down his face. He was younger than he had been when he died. “Hey, Boo. Did you get Gatorade when you went to the store?”

Michonne was frozen, her back plastered against the entryway wall. Everything was so white and clean, and she stood in this now alien landscape in her dirty boots, blood smeared over her hands. His blood.

“Well, didja?” he asked affably, his face uncreased with worry until he glanced up at her. “Hey, Baby, what’s wrong? You look like you seen a ghost.”

Michonne finally spoke, “Do you know what I do to you? I don’t mean now, but later?”

A shadow of gaunt decay passed over his face, the lights dimmed, and for a moment he was as she remembered him most clearly. “Yeah, Baby, I do. But don’t blame yourself. We do the things we have to do to survive, right?”

Then suddenly, as with the plasticity of dreams, she was naked and pressed up against him, wanting him as much as she always had, as much as she still did. Her hand ran down the tight planes of his stomach and dipped into his ridiculously lengthy and thankfully loose b-ball shorts. Her questing fingers found him, hard, long, and bit thinner than she remembered. She laughed breathlessly as he moaned against her neck. “You’ve changed.”

“Things change all the time, especially now.” He answered his voice taking on the nasal, country twang of the hills, his skin growing lighter, his eyes cat-like and hazel green.

She woke with a start to find her hand inside Dixon’s shorts, his cock hard. She wanted to let go, wanted to get away from the ache and heat that had started in her belly the minute she saw him brought back relatively safe. His hand closed over hers, pinning it as she tried to let go. Even though full night was on, the wan light of the moon sparked in Dixon’s gaze. He lifted his hurt arm, cupping her high, tight breast with a little grunt that could either be pain or satisfaction. 

Things did change, and sex could just be sex.

She experimented with this lie aloud, “This doesn’t have to change things between us.”

He didn’t answer. She knew it wasn’t in him to lie. It was his strange country code of honor. He did draw her face to his and kissed her, a tasting, questing, hunger that fueled the same in her. With an economy of movement, she slipped her panties aside and engulfed him in one smoothly aching movement. They took from each other in breathless silence.

They spent the rest of the night alternately fucking and dozing. None of it seemed enough for either of them, but it would have to do. 

When the first gray light of dawn slid into the cell, Michonne gathered her clothes and left. Dixon didn’t ask her to stay.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Yawny at the Apocalypse_ by Andrew Bird from the album **Armchair Apocrypha** , 2007.


End file.
